Thursday, March 19, 2015

Supernatural 10x15 "The Things They Carried" [Contributor: Deena Edwards]


"The Things They Carried"
Original Airdate: March 18, 2015

As you’ll probably notice, I decided to change things up a little in this particular review. Since this was a pretty basic monster-of-the-week episode, I thought it would be better to, rather than my usual scene-by-scene recap, focus on the characters and their development this time around.

Let’s start with the returning Cole Trenton. You would think with practically 90% of his interactions with the Winchesters in the show so far being him trying to kill Dean, that I would want him dead. That I would have spent the entire episode rolling my eyes at him and wondering why they brought him back in the first place, but no. As a character, I’m actually warming up to the guy, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s got great chemistry with our boys already. Sure, he’s reckless, stubborn, and he nearly got himself killed going in alone to save his friend, a man who was practically family to him. But in the end... doesn’t that description sound a little bit familiar? A certain pair of brothers who throw themselves into danger nearly every day of their lives, willing to put themselves in harm’s way multiple times just for the chance of saving one life?

Of course, Cole isn’t as smart about it, but that’s only because he’s still new to this whole world. He spent most of his life training to kill, but he’s still innocent in his own way when it comes to what’s really out there. Before he found out the truth, he’d gone his entire life believing that the only ‘monster’ that existed came in the form of Dean Winchester, the very man who killed his father when he was young. As unprepared as he still is now in the supernatural world, he has to go anyway. He has to warn Kit, his friend--- in his mind, that was the right thing to do. He was thinking with his heart, with his emotions, rather than with his head like skilled hunters do, but I can’t entirely blame him for that.

He didn’t embrace the hunter lifestyle, and yet, when he decided to go find his friend, even if it wasn’t exactly the safest thing to do, I felt like he was a hunter in that moment, making a tough decision to keep someone safe. Even if the someone was actually the monster, he wanted to tackle this in a way that no one else got hurt. He wanted to find his friend, and try to fix it, rather than just having the monster and its host killed outright, which is a department our Team Free Will have been faltering in as of late. They were raised to think that if something’s a monster, you put it down. Cole, on the other hand, feels as if there’s a chance to save his buddy without doing that, he wants to at least try.

And then, when he tells Dean that if it goes down “that road”, that if he’s unable to get the Khan worm out of him before it’s too late, to kill him, like he killed his father--- he finally understands the reason behind Dean’s actions. Cole has been nothing if not bitter about it, blaming his father’s death on Dean rather than the monster inside his father, until now. This is wonderful development on his part, and part of me can’t help but hope we get to see him again soon. Though, another part of me hopes that we don’t, that he gets to return to his family and try to put his life back together, rather than having any more part in the supernatural world. He deserves that much.
- “Don’t blame yourself for Kit, man.”
- “I can’t help it, Dean, it feels crappy.”
- “I know it does.”
Like I’ve said once before, Sam and Dean are no strangers to guilt, and in this episode, Sam especially takes his failure to save Cole’s friend really hard. He’s always been the more sympathetic of the two, more vocally emotional when things get rough, and this is no exception. He feels crappy, and he has every right to be. When their job is about saving people, it doesn’t matter how many people they save; if they fail to save one person out of a hundred, they’ll still beat themselves up over it. In this case, Sam’s failure to save Kit has a pretty obvious double meaning, which is obvious when Dean assures him that you can do everything right, and still sometimes “the guy still dies.” You can see the determination in Sam’s eyes the very last second before it cuts to black. He’s not going to let that happen. He’s going to try, and keep trying, however long and however hard it takes, until he saves his brother.

And of course, I’m not going to forget about Dean. Even though this episode focused very little on him and his Mark of Cain problem, there were still very subtle moments within it that shows that he might actually be well on his way onto accepting this whole deal. He’s always referred to himself as not worthy of being saved, and even now that seems to hold true to him. It kills him to see Sam trying so hard, when he himself believes there’s no way back from this, which in turn, kills me. Why can’t our boys have a moment of happiness?!

Memorable Moments/Quotes:
  • The episode took place in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Even though that’s roughly about four hours from where I am, I still felt it was flail-worthy when I saw the ep was in my state.
  • “Dude, it wasn’t porn.” “Okay, ‘erotica,’ whatever.” 
  • “I gotta move on. So I’m gonna keep doing what we do, while I still can, and I’d like you to be there with me.”
  • Two of the characters had the names Rick and Beth. Is this The Walking Dead, or Supernatural?
  • “That was a dumbass move coming in here alone, you know that, right?” “I’m sorry, I should have let the machete brothers cut my buddy’s head off.”
  • “What do you think about rapid dehydration?” “Big fan.”
  • Sammy boy? Dean-o?  Cole, please. I like ya, but you’ve not been around long enough to earn the use of those nicknames.

0 comments:

Post a Comment